


more of a climb, less of a walk

by doxian



Series: Homestuck Shipping World Cup 2013 [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Homestuck Shipping World Cup 2013, Incest, Introspection, M/M, Sibling Incest, implied depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doxian/pseuds/doxian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something about the semblance of time is comforting to you. If the clock on your PDA says it's 7am, then you're arbitrarily deciding that it is indeed 7am, dammit. </p><p>HSWC bonus round fill in response to <a href="http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/8507.html?thread=2054203#cmt2054203">this prompt slash fic soundtrack.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	more of a climb, less of a walk

**Author's Note:**

> AU where Dirk runs into the meteor crew, and the trip from the Furthest Ring to the alpha kids' planets takes significantly longer.

You've taken to waking up embarrassingly early. Never would've pegged yourself as a morning person. Yeah, okay, morning doesn't really exist anymore, not on the meteor. The view is set permanently to spangled silver on black, which was impressive to you once, but it sort of lost its luster after the first year or so. 

Something about the semblance of time is comforting to you, though. Maybe it's because of your aspect, or maybe it's because having actual days and nights is _normal_. Like putting (alchemized) posters in your room is normal, like making shitty ironic web-humor is normal. So if the clock on your PDA says it's 7am, then you're arbitrarily deciding that it is indeed 7am, dammit.

No one else is awake. You're in the common room, laptop set up and ready to go. You have ambitious plans to do Nothing In Particular: work on some raps or tweak the ebubbles interface or discover something else to do that will magically make the last few months on this godforsaken meteor tick by in an instant. 

You're in the middle of making shitty coffee - more out of habit than desire, just like with your sleeping patterns - when Dirk walks in.

He's wearing his orange hat shirt and jeans and no shoes and his hair is tousled, slightly flattened on one side where he must have slept on it. Thanks to a combination of hair product and sweat, it's also standing up all stiff and stupid-looking. His shades are off for once, tucked into his shirt collar. You know he sleeps in snatches here and there, like a cat, sometimes in the room he'd taken over and other times on the reclining platform in the lab. A byproduct of never having to keep a proper sleep schedule, you guess.

"Hey," he says, yawning.

"Top of the mornin'," you reply, turning back to the enthralling spectacle that is brown bean juice trickling into a mug.

He gets right up in your space. Stands right behind you and winds his arms around your waist, squeezes, shoves his nose into the nape of your neck. You can hear the soft susurrus of him breathing you in. What a creep. You're almost exactly the same height, he's maybe an inch taller than you, and that's still weird. You don't have to remind yourself of who he's not, because it's glaringly obvious, but there are similarities that stand out to you sometimes - mannerisms, facial expressions - that make you give yourself a little mental shake.

You don't idolize him like you did Bro, no way, there's nothing in this weird mess of a kid that you could ever put on a pedestal. Besides, you've grown out of that sort of thing. (You think.) But you look up to him, a little, because it's easy. Even if he seems tired, listless, and has been that way ever since you picked him up at the outskirts of the Furthest Ring. When you and Karkat talk about your impending arrival - discussions that loop over and over and stutter out without any kind of resolution, and that can be effectively summed up with "we're reaching the new session soon, maybe we should strategize or something?" - he proposes plans, mostly terribly risky and convoluted. He doesn't seem particularly attached to seeing them through. 

Messed up and half-assed as Dirk's suggestions may be, you find yourself going silent and taking a back seat to the conversation as soon as he opens his mouth, and it's _bad_ , you know it is, but you're too relieved to have someone else taking the reins to really question it. You'd been trying to avoid thinking about the role the game seems to have picked out for you (which means you'd been thinking about it non-stop) and you're happy enough to trick yourself into thinking that, no, maybe you were wrong, maybe what you thought were signs weren't signs after all. 

Dirk keeps his arms around you and his face in your neck even as you take the few steps required for you to reach for the sugar bowl next to the coffee maker. He almost trips you up by accident as he follows, step for shuffled step. He's such a needy asshole, jesus, Bro would never have acted this transparently clingy. (You'd never even seen him around a, uh, faux-boyfriend, sloppy-makeouts-buddy, what _ever_ , so it's not like you would have known.)

This unnamed thing between you - _that_ started almost immediately after you'd started talking, and it's something else you've filed in the "Do Not Think About This, No Really Don't Think About This" drawer in your brain. It had all happened ridiculously fast: you'd avoided him as best you could for at least a month after he came aboard, but he kept pushing. The most drawn out game of hide-and-seek that two not-quite-kids had ever played. Dirk was curious about you, strangely way more okay with meeting an alternate version of his older brother than you were. (He had never known his bro, not beyond what was left of him in the form of historical records and movies and gallons upon gallons of orange soda.) 

Then one day he had switched up his totally lame-as-fuck god tier robes for a tank top and jeans, and you had seen his tattoo, and something had clenched and released hard in your chest, and you told yourself that that didn't change anything, but from that moment on you stopped going out of your way to not speak to him.

You dump sugar in your coffee and stir, and he finally tires of your (seeming) lack of attention and turns your head to the side, just as you're taking the spoon out of your cup, making you flick some of the scalding liquid on yourself. He kisses you, warm and gentle and yet somehow aggressive, goading you into kissing him deeper, not even giving you the option of keeping it chaste (not like you'd even want to). You close your eyes and keep your hands still, like a dumbass, and his hand is still pressed to your cheek, and you feel kind of smothered. Eventually he pulls away and you try to keep your breathing even, because god _damn_.

"Whoa, dude, you've got some seriously chronic morning breath, you should get that shit checked out," you say, realizing that you sound awkward even as you talk, your words colliding clumsily. 

He just snorts at that, his face is in your neck again so it sounds more like a snuffly wheeze.

You don't know what the two of you are doing, to be honest. He mentioned something about an ex, Gramps Egbert Junior, you think. He never goes into detail. It doesn't really occur to you to be jealous, because, hell, you're still kind of stuck on Terezi, and it's not like whatever-this-is _means_ anything. Karkat scolded you when he found out about it, saying that you were breaking the no-rebound rule, or rather the no-crooked-throw-and-return-device rule, and that everything would go to shit. You'd plugged your ears - no romance lectures, nope, even if it's not about quadrants, fucking hell. What do relationship rules matter in a world where you're the only humans left, anyway? Might as well make your own rules.

(You don't remind Karkat that the ectosiblingcest is worse, by human standards.)

"Want coffee?" you ask, to fill the silence. 

"Nah. I'm gonna take a shower," he says, and untwines himself from you, finally. He'll be gone for at least an hour, then. 

You hear him walking back towards the door. 

"I hope you're gonna regale me with your sweet verse when I get back," he calls. He must have looked at the document you'd left open on your laptop, fuck. Usually you're always up for sharing your sick flow, but it's always more of a _project_ when it's him.

You sit down in front of your computer, sip your coffee, and you don't know what this is, or if it's anything good, but for now maybe it'll be enough.


End file.
